Any ideas for getting freelance work in academic projects?

[Andrius Sutas]

I was wondering, has anyone from LHS had any experience with freelancing in academia? How should one approach academia? What one should consider when approaching? Do's and don'ts?

[Adrian Godwin]

I've had a couple of jobs. You'd expect there to be plenty of students available to do things for nothing or low rates, but it seems not; there are a number of problems :

1. they're there to get a qualification. can't do too much other work

2. writing up is more important than completing the project

3. if the job takes more than a year, or needs maintenance, students are no good.

If someone needs a hand and isn't aware of these difficulties, you're not going to replace a cheap student. But if they've tried before and failed to complete a project, they'll value these advantages.

I don't think there's a single good way to make contact. As always, good networking - perhaps rather thorough : go to conferences and seminars that cover areas you want to work in, and talk to people who are involved in long-running projects.

You probably won't get commercial london rates, but if you want the variety, it's worth chasing.

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 5:11 PM, Andrius Sutas <and...@sutas.eu> wrote:

I was wondering, has anyone from LHS had any experience with freelancing in academia? How should one approach academia? What one should consider when approaching? Do's and don'ts?

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[Sarah Simmonds]

From experience:

a) The official, hard slog method is to get involved in the tender process (https://www.gov.uk/tendering-for-public-sector-contracts/the-tendering-process). Some companies spend a small fortune pitching for a tender but obviously it depends on the details of the project. I haven't done this personally but I know people who have and it's a hard road that *may* lead you to b).

b) Simply get to know the people. A department at a university is like a small community, the department heads, research academics and lecturers tend to know each other. That doesn't mean there's always work available, but having contacts means you'll be informed when there is with no competition.

I worked in academia for a few years (a long time ago in a previous life). Personal experience:

i) It doesn't pay well

ii) Really, the pay is terrible

iii) Slow. Things happen slowly, a project may get started then be put on the bench for months while it filters through the right channels or waits for other resources. Steady work and income can be tough to procure. 

iv) Design by committee. You'll work with very smart people and the way smart people show their worth is by finding faults, predicting edge cases and making sure all milestones have been put through sufficient cross examination. More often than not things get bikeshedded to shreds and take 4x longer than they should.

v) Politics and bureaucracy. Wow. Really smart people who aren't paid enough, compete for funding, hold onto a reputation of intelligence and have too much time on their hands can demand you jump through a lot of crazy hoops. 

Although I'm probably just bitter. Maybe not all universities or educational institutions are as bad as the ones I worked for. However I'll never forget the years of war between IT Support and Helpdesk. We lost many good men. *moment of silence*

Best of luck!

[Sarah Simmonds]

Hrm... upon further reflection I use generic terminology when talking about a few dozen very specific personal examples. If you work in academia please don't take any of it personally :) Very interested to hear from anyone with different/opposing experiences.

[wyan std]

As a former academic myself, I can't argue with anything you mentioned :-)

[David Murphy]

As someone currently working in an academic department that sounds fair.

Though some of those things also apply to large companies as well where endless lines of little middle managers append useless or silly requirements to show that they're "contributing" and giving "input" and basically getting their names attached to projects and making sure they're noticed at meetings.

[Benjamin Blundell]

I would say that some of these things are true but there's more.

I currently work as a techie in academia and my previous job was exactly what you describe, freelancer for hire with academics in the main.

I agree the pay is terrible. Its a trade off because I find the academic projects by far the most fulfilling. As a freelancer you can pick and choose. Some of the best projects are ones that are totally left field (working with a Cambridge historian was one of these for me)

Networking is key. All my jobs came through people I already knew from my previous academic life with a couple of exceptions. That can be a problem sadly. Its not easy to get these contacts.

Things are changing in academic circles though. My new job is great because they've taken my freelance job and made it official. Universities are beginning to recognise that having a few good programmers on staff is no bad thing. This way I get more pay, pension and perks though I loose the freedom to choose jobs. That said I have more money which means more freedom in another sense. All this is based on two data points; not a lot I admit but the trend is researchers are paid to research h, not write (and more importantly support) code. Funders want to see results in terms of things they can play with like websites, databases, supported software etc and postdocs just don't have the time.

My advice would be to totally try the freelance gig. Its awesome to do for a bit. However keep your eyes peeled for jobs like research programmer or similar. If, like me, you want to write code that might help save lives and further human knowledge then this is the way to go.